2008 Woodie Awards
First Fridays inspire Whitworth students
Audrey Gore, Staff Writer
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A toilet with a strobe light inside, Oreos, a taste of downtown and tons of art may seem like they have nothing in common, but they can all be found at one event: Spokane’s downtown art walk, First Friday.
First Fridays are a tradition where on the first Friday of every month Spokane’s art galleries open up to the public, featuring new exhibits and free food while the public bounces from one to another. It is also a tradition for Whitworth’s own Artists Guild to carpool downtown each month and check out what is new in the art scene.
The Artists Guild started out this month's stroll through the arts at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture. (MAC) For this month, the MAC features exhibits on the Columbia River, the history of Spokane and the Northwest area, and a special exhibit of clothes and other everyday household items dating from the World War II era. These items, donated by Dianna Bolch, are representative of the average family at the time and the things that they used everyday. The exhibit is a sampling of what people had at a time when consumerism was just beginning.
The Bolch family lived on the South Hill, when the road was still unpaved and their house was the only building up there. Some of the clothes in the exhibit were worn by Bolch herself, who wanted to show people what life was like at simpler time in Spokane.
The next stop on the art walk was the Lorinda Knight gallery downtown. An eclectic mixture of art and music besiege art enthusiasts as they walk in. A video screen showing a montage of pictures, a Buddha, two different test screens, and an airplane pilot, flashes on the back screen to a hard techno type beat while a man in a simulated cockpit sends emergency messages to ground control men.Voile performance art.
The test pilot then joined a jazzy techno band for a few songs. While he sat on a toilet with a strobe light inside and played the drums, plates of appetizers were passed around to an enthusiastic crowd.
Guests could then go upstairs and see work by a medley of local artists including Whitworth’s own Stephen Rue, a lecturer in the art department. Though the performance art was different from much stationary art, it was well received.
“That’s performance art for you,” senior Maddison Colvin said
The third stop for the evening was the Chase Gallery, a bit more posh than the Lorinda Knight; it also had live music, in this case a string trio and more food. The exhibit, the most crowded of all featured hundreds of photographs of local artists with their art. Including a portrait of head of the art department Gordon Wilson. This exhibit drew the biggest crowd because artists attended, as well their friends and students.
The last gallery of the night was the Tinman Gallery on Garland Street, with a younger, edgier group and a more eclectic mixture of art and books.
The well-rounded mixture of art and the variety of venues makes First Friday an exciting experience. You never know what you will see or run into, be it strobe light toilets or a historical perspective on our live.
Art can be confusing and difficult to understand, especially art that is different from convention, such as performance art.
“I don’t know what it means but I like it,” freshman Robyn Best said.
First Friday is a great opportunity to get off campus and check out what’s going on around town. For more information on attending November's First Friday art walk, contact Amy Newton the Artist Guild president.
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